The Dancer Who Loved Long Division

Some people may think that the sciences and arts are diametrically opposed foes…but not Hamilton’s associate choreographer Stephanie Klemons! As a child, Stephanie’s favorite ways to play were dance and math games, and both shaped the rest of her life. In this episode of “Once Upon A Playtime,” we’ll learn how math and science helped Stephanie become a star dancer on Broadway, why physical movement helps kids and grown-ups feel good, and the role of play in helping us find our passions. You can follow Stephanie on Instagram here and find out more at www.stephanieklemons.com.

“I think oftentimes a lot of things could be healed if we would just start moving more, and not at a certain time and not in a certain place and not in a certain way with rules, but just move. And I know for me, I see it in my life so clearly.”

Narrator:

Welcome to “Once Upon a Playtime”, a podcast from The Genius of Play for parents and their kids about the serious importance of having fun. Today's story is “The Dancer Who Loved Long Division” – a true tale about how play helps us find our passions, whatever they may be.

Stephanie Klemons:

My name is Stephanie Klemons and I am a Broadway performer, choreographer, and director. I'm a mom of two boys and I am also a founder of a non-profit organization called Katie's Art Project.

Narrator:

Stephanie has danced her way through some of Broadway's biggest hits as a performer, dance captain and choreographer. She's worked on musicals like In the Heights, If/Then, and Bring It On. Oh, and she also did this other show. It's kind of underground.

Stephanie Klemons:

My most notable show that many people have heard of is Hamilton. I was an original cast member and I'm also the associate choreographer of that show.

Narrator:

That's right. Hamilton, the 11 time Tony Award winning, record breaking, international musical phenomenon, Hamilton. Stephanie has worked with Hamilton for nearly seven years. You might think that working with the same musical for that long could get boring, but not for Stephanie.

Stephanie Klemons:

It's interesting at this point in my life when I'm in the position where I am managing Hamilton and I'm doing the same dance over and over again, right? How many times have I run an audition to the song, My Shot? But even just the release of doing the same movement is something for me and I can tell in my body and my life when I don't get to do it, and it's never good.

Narrator:

For Stephanie and for a lot of other people, dance doesn't just help her body. Dancing, like all forms of active play, helps us develop coordination, balance and motor skills, but it also helps us process our emotions.

Stephanie Klemons:

If I could explain the feeling for me when I'm not dancing or when I haven't danced for a while, it's kind of like the feeling of being stuck in a very small box. I begin to feel walls and it's not just in my body. I almost always see the pattern first in my emotional well-being and health.

Narrator:

Stephanie's journey towards Hamilton might surprise you. How does a brainy genius girl with a store of knowledge, who study astrophysics in college, learning formulas and solve an X to find the answer, leave all that behind and become a famous Broadway dancer? You know what? That was awkward. Let's begin again in five, six, five, six, seven, eight. Once upon a time in a not so far away kingdom called New Jersey, there was a little girl named Stephanie, and like lots of little kids, Stephanie loved to play. One of her favorite ways to play was to move.

Stephanie Klemons:

Movement entered my life very early on via MTV music videos and when Madonna would release a new music video, it was the most exciting thing that I would wait for all week. But as lore goes, at two years old I saw a Madonna music video and I learned every dance step and I could dance with the TV. Now, I don't know if my mom's memory is just like me shaking it and she thought, "Oh, that's good" or if I actually learned the steps, but I did actually start dancing early.

Narrator:

And while two-year-old Stephanie was voguing, she found her passion. Finding your passion can take years or even decades. Some people never find their passion at all, but by the age of two, Stephanie had stumbled upon her one true passion, dance. Five, six, seven, wait, I take that back. Dancing was Stephanie's passion, but it wasn't her only passion. There was another way she liked to play.

Stephanie Klemons:

I liked kind of playing on my own and my favorite thing to do was math games. My favorite game as a kid was long division. I would make my mom write these really ridiculously long numbers and do old school divisions. So I would ask her to write 20 number long numbers, or something that would just take me a really long time. And basically that was my very favorite thing to do.

Narrator:

Each morning, Stephanie would ask her mother to write a long division problem on her dry erase board. It was her favorite way to play! Now, you might be thinking, "Hey, math can't be play." But you'd be wrong. Play can be dolls and blocks and board games and those things are lots of fun, but play can also be vacuum cleaners and tinfoil and yes, even math on dry erase boards.

Stephanie Klemons:

To me, play is the ability to do anything, structured or not – math games, division or running in circles – whatever play is for you. And at the end of play time, you don't have to hand in a paper to be graded. There is no necessary outcome. It's just purely discovery.

Narrator:

Play comes in many shapes and sizes, but the common denominator is discovery. And Stephanie got to play and discover on her own terms because she had an awesome and supportive mom.

Stephanie Klemons:

My mom was really an integral part of my childhood in exploring what I like to do and how I like to play. Even though she did work a lot, she would give me those long division problems or I used to love putting on press-on nails, so she would just buy me one pack of press-on nails every day. So whatever it was that I enjoyed doing, she was always in support of me exploring that and giving me the opportunity to have access to the things that I wanted to do.

Narrator:

Whether it's dance, long division or press-on nails, a play routine provides a sense of comfort and familiarity for kids. And that makes play an especially important tool for children when their environment changes.

Stephanie Klemons:

So my mom was divorced early, one day my father just wasn't there anymore and then, one day my mom was remarried and then we're moving and it was like, I didn't really have control over any of those situations and I think that math was something that I could control. It was something that even if it was hard, right – a funny number, long number – I could always at the end figure out the answer. There was something about that repetitive and also true concrete nature that I liked. It was math, right? It's methodical, if you divide this number, two into four, it's always going to be two.

Narrator:

Stephanie liked math because she knew that she could always find the answer. She just had to solve the problem one step at a time. And because of dance, Stephanie had a lot of practice learning steps.

Stephanie Klemons:

And I think part of my early enjoyment of dancing was being able to memorize something fast and that sort of need to be able to control something and achieve it, right? Know that there would be an unknown and I could solve it, right? The unknown is how do you do this dance and then the solving is, I can do the steps in sequential order the way that they were taught to me.

Narrator:

Stephanie kept dancing and she kept studying math. And when she was older, she found another passion, science. People think that science and dance are diametrically opposed foes. In non-Hamilton words, they're totally different, like north and south, hot and cold, Garfield and Mondays, but Stephanie saw things a little differently.

Stephanie Klemons:

It actually felt like I was traveling on a loop, on a circle. For me, the things were one very much bled into the next and then back around again. And so I always pictured dance and science as originating from a single point, traveling away from each other and then reconnecting again at the bottom.

Narrator:

When Stephanie went to Rutgers University, she decided to follow all of her passions. Why do one magnificent thing when you could do two or even three?

Stephanie Klemons:

Math was an important part of my life for a really long time, so I double majored in college. I was a Genetics Microbio Research major and a dance major. And one of my favorite subjects was astrophysics and vector physics and I think it was for the same reason, just because I just thought it was easy and not that it was... Easy is not the right word, it was difficult. But if you just followed the steps, you could always get to the answer.

Narrator:

But some people thought that Stephanie was taking a step in the wrong direction. Stephanie's heart told her to follow all of her passions, dance and astrophysics and microbiology and math. But Stephanie's teachers told her to pick one.

Stephanie Klemons:

My dean at the time, the dean of the dance department would always say to me, "If you really want to make it, you can only dance. If you're really serious about dancing, it will be the only thing that you do."

Narrator:

Stephanie didn't listen to her dean. She studied dance and she worked in labs, studying cancer treatments. How cool is that? Stephanie even got accepted to medical school, but luckily for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Stephanie decided to defer her med school for a year and pursue dance. And when she got her first Broadway gig, she realized that the dean of the dance department couldn't have been more wrong.

Stephanie Klemons:

The sort of ironic thing of all of it is my first Broadway show I booked when I was 23 and I was made the swing of the show, which for my non-Broadway people, a swing is someone who covers multiple roles in the show. As a swing, you're oftentimes being put in a situation where you're moving around 23 fast moving bodies to music in front of a paying audience and there's traffic patterns – that's science! It's science, memorizing traffic patterns is organic chemistry, hands down, exact same thing.

Narrator:

As a swing, Stephanie used science every day, and it swings both ways.

Stephanie Klemons:

And similarly speaking, when I'm in a lab thinking, "Okay, what configurations can I add these materials together to create this outcome that I want?" I have to be creative. I have to think, "Well, if I lessen this and I add a little bit more of this”, and so there's a large element of creativity to that.

Narrator:

You might think that Stephanie's story is pretty rare, but lots of artists have a science background and lots of scientists have an art background. Brian May played guitar for Queen and then got a doctorate in astrophysics. Hedy Lamarr was a movie star whose inventions helped pave the way for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth headphones, and Beatrix Potter was a natural scientist who wrote and illustrated The Tale of Peter Rabbit. All of these amazing people, just like Stephanie, knew that they could follow more than one passion.

Stephanie Klemons:

Because when you are one of these people that society considers to be an anomaly, it's like, it turns out that we're not. So I think it's more common than you think that sort of way of thinking of it as a loop, as opposed to a flat line. Not everything is linear and that a lot of people have that intersection of interest.

Narrator:

And because she's just non-stop, Stephanie is still discovering new passions like helping other people have access to art.

Stephanie Klemons:

I have a non-profit organization called Katie's Art Project that connects kids facing life-threatening internal illnesses with artists to basically create a lasting legacy through art.

Narrator:

And that's not all. A few years ago, Stephanie found yet another passion, parenthood.

Stephanie Klemons:

I am a mom of two little boys, a two and a half year old and a four month old.

Narrator:

Stephanie shares her passions with her kids, even her four month old. After all, it's never too early to start learning rhythm.

Stephanie Klemons:

When I put him to sleep, I actually do tapping rhythms on his tush. And I did this with both my kids and I find the rhythm that calms them the most or I'll purposefully do some polyrhythm or I'll purposefully do some regular sort of like seven-eight rhythm.

Narrator:

And with her two and a half year old, Stephanie does full-on dance routines.

Stephanie Klemons:

We'll have different dance parties and we were onto Rock Lobster for a long time, which is seven and a half minutes long and it's freaking exhausting. But we have this whole sort of choreograph thing that we do to these certain sections and he loves that. Kids love to know when something's coming, they love to know the answer. And so that has been something that we've done as a family, which I think has really connected us and brings him a lot of joy.

Narrator:

And by tapping out those rhythms and creating choreographed Rock Lobster routines, Stephanie is teaching her sons the basics of dance and the basics of math.

Stephanie Klemons:

I think oftentimes we forget that you can teach science by having a dance party, right? You can teach science and fractions by learning a piece of music and you can teach the law of entropy by a dance class. I think that we'd find that a lot more people have intersectional interest if we were to present things in a slightly modified way.

Narrator:

So parents, if your children have big dreams about being painters/paleontologists, singers/psychologists or movie stars/astronauts, let them explore those passions through play and as many passions as they can count. Remember, we can all be more than one magnificent thing!

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